art history

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/8/2021
  

  Robert L. Herbert, 91, Dies; Saw Impressionism With a Fresh Eye

  Robert Herbert's studies of impressionism revitalized the field by situating the work of artists in the context of theri social lives. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/26/2021
  

  Cheech Marin’s Chicano Art Museum Is to Open This Fall

  “My motto has always been that you can’t love or hate Chicano art unless you see it in person,” Marin said. “And now people will have a place to always see it.”

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  1/2/2021
  

  'Where Are The Women?': Uncovering The Lost Works Of Female Renaissance Artists

  Since 2009, a nonprofit organization called Advancing Women Artists has worked to recover work by female artists and document the history of sexism in the arts. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Art Newspaper
  12/17/2020
  

  French Senate Blocks Restitution of 27 Artifacts to Benin and Senegal in Dispute with National Assembly

  The bill under consideration would compel France to return artifacts plundered from Benin and Senegal in the 1890s. 

• 
• 12/13/2020
  

  Anarchism and the Avant-Garde: Félix Fénéon at the Museum of Modern Art

  by Sam Ben-Meir

  A new MOMA exhibition centers not on artists, but on the avant-garde critic and editor Félix Fénéon, whose championing of innovative artists meshed with his radical politics as a critique of the injustices of modern society.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/3/2020
  

  Artists Ask MoMA to Remove Philip Johnson’s Name, Citing Racist Views

  A group of more than 30 artists and academics have signed a letter asking institutions like the Museum of Modern Art to excise the influential architect’s name from their spaces.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/25/2020
  

  The Myth of North America, in One Painting

  Explore an immersive, interactive page that shows how "The Death of General Wolfe" by Benjamin West created a heroic myth of the British defeat of the French near Quebec, which helped decide the Seven Years War.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/30/2020
  

  Smithsonian Archives of American Art Gathers an Oral History of 2020

  The National Archives of American Art has been moving aggressively to document artists' responses to the concurrent social traumas of 2020, including the pandemic, police violence and protests, and a tumultuous election campaign. 

• 
• SOURCE: BitchMedia
  10/30/2020
  

  Monstrous Men: The Medusa #MeToo Monument Has an Oedipal Complex

  by Erin Thompson and Sonja Drimmer

  A New York statue of Medusa erected as a monument to the #MeToo movement of identifying sexual abusers of women is in fact yet another instance of fighting among male artists using women's bodies as symbolic weapons. It also garbles the myth of Medusa, draining it of its relevance to #MeToo.

• 
• SOURCE: Datebook
  10/1/2020
  

  Teaching the Racism of European Art Head-On

  by Letha Ch'ien

  "Race and European Art set out to examine our racial history clearly, without sidestepping  the ugly and uncomfortable parts of our heritage. I got lucky, because the students who signed up wanted to do the same work. And boy, was it depressing. I joked that I had become the professor of 'Bum You Out Studies'."

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  9/28/2020
  

  Philip Guston's KKK Images Force Us to Stare Evil in the Face – We Need Art Like This

  "Art shouldn’t be polite. Guston’s work puts you into a headlock and forces you to stare into the face of evil, rearranging your sense of reality into a better one – and that’s what art needs to do more than ever."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/28/2020
  

  A Fuller Picture of Artemisia Gentileschi

  As one of the first women to forge a successful career as a painter, Artemisia was celebrated internationally in her lifetime, but her reputation languished after her death.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/27/2020
  

  In His Own Words: Jacob Lawrence at the Met and MoMA

  The artist Jacob Lawrence died in 2000; he spent a day in New York museums with Times art critic Michael Kimmelman four years before, discussing art and his creative process. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg
  8/28/2020
  

  Why the Fight Over Statues Will Never End (video)

  Art historian and "art crime" expert Erin Thompson offers insight into the history of iconoclasm and why social change makes arguments about statues and public memorials inevitable.

• 
• SOURCE: Vanity Fair
  8/24/2020
  

  What Should A Museum Look Like In 2020?

  "A call for divestment involves an acknowledgment of the ways that museums rely on local police departments to do the work of mental health providers and emergency medical technicians, as well as the implicit ways contracts with police departments protect property over people," said MoMA curator Thomas J. Lax.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/11/2020
  

  Museum’s Future Clouded by Chance Discovery: Swastika Hiding in Plain Sight

  The discovery of a Nazi symbol in the mosaic floor of a German museum has prompted bitter debate about its creator’s past and the institution’s role.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  8/6/2020
  

  The Secret History of America’s Worthless Confederate Monuments

  They’re cheap, mass produced, and celebrate the Jim Crow South. So why do conservatives persist in calling them art?

• 
• SOURCE: Foreign Policy
  7/28/2020
  

  Is It Time to Repatriate Africa’s Looted Art?

  Museums now face a moral reckoning over artifacts stolen by people who took colonial violence and racial superiority as a given. It is time to start having honest conversations about righting those wrongs.

• 
• 7/26/2020
  

  Lincoln, Cass, and Daniel Chester French: Homely Politicians Divided by Politics, United through Art

  by Harold Holzer

  In the age before the glare of television and instantaneous photography were relentlessly aimed at our leaders, politicians could succeed even if they looked like Lewis Cass. Or Abraham Lincoln.

• 
• SOURCE: University of South Carolina
  7/22/2020
  

  The Long History of How Jesus Came to Resemble a White European

  No one knows exactly what Jesus looked like, and there are no known images of him from his lifetime. Art history professor Anna Smartwood House writes about the complicated history of the images of Christ and how historically they have served many purposes.